(Newser)
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A 7-year-old boy was shot dead and his body apparently hidden in a home where three adults were found fatally shot and a fourth was stabbed, a sheriff said Thursday as a manhunt for the suspect focused on a wooded area near Ohio's southern tip. Authorities had issued a missing-child alert after the slayings and spent hours searching for Devin Holston only to find the child dead Thursday at the same house trailer where the bodies were found, the AP reports. The suspect, 23-year-old Aaron Lawson, is being sought on warrants for charges including aggravated murder, Lawrence County Sheriff Jeffery Lawless said.

Deputies spotted Lawson around 12:30am Thursday in a blue Chevrolet truck in Ironton, about 15 miles south of where the victims were found, but they lost him after a brief chase when he crashed into a ditch and ran into the woods, Lawless said. The sheriff told the Ironton Tribune that all those involved were somehow related. The three adults were found dead in a house trailer in an unincorporated area further north on Wednesday evening, and a fourth adult, who went to the scene after work looking for his relatives, was stabbed there after encountering Lawson and fled to another home to seek help, the sheriff said.